Producer: Tony Brown

When MCA Records, who eventually made Tony Brown company president, put out Steve Earle’s debut album Guitar Town having poached him from CBS, it reaped the rewards of bringing the maverick Texan spirit to country music fans who liked a little rock’n’roll in their gumbo.

Brown was one of the key executives who sold America its top country artists in the big-selling era of hat acts and Urban Cowboys. Although his own business website overdoes the hyperbole – ‘an unshakeable pillar of country music…credited with founding the Americana country movement’ – Brown certainly deserves commendation for his work in many aspects of the business. As a piano player, he backed Elvis Presley in the last two years of his life before playing with Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash.

He produced dozens of albums for the likes of George Strait, Wynonna, Steve Wariner, Reba McEntire and Vince Gill. He also helmed Lionel Richie’s 2012 country project Tuskegee, and as well as signing Earle, he brought Trisha Yearwood, The Mavericks and Patty Loveless to MCA. After his work there was done, he co-founded Universal South Records, steering to success a whole new generation of artists including Phil Vassar and Joe Nichols. The label also merged with Toby Keith’s Show Dog and took control of Trace Adkins’ career.

Brown, who also overcame a brain injury he suffered in 2003, is approaching his 80^th birthday. He really ought to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in the next few goes round.

Player: Floyd Cramer

It might not be hyperbole to say that, on record, Floyd Cramer is one of the most recognisable musicians in country music. His ‘slip-note’ style of piano-playing, which was inspired by guitar players who slid from one note to the next, has graced dozens of classic recordings including hits under his own name, having escaped the anonymous lot of the session musician.

Last Date was kept off number one on the Hot 100 by Are You Lonesome Tonight by Elvis Presley, whose piano part had been played by…Floyd Cramer himself! He even had a UK number one with the groovy instrumental On The Rebound, and he took a version of Bob Wills’ bluegrass tune San Antonio Rose into the US top ten too.

After growing up in Huttig in Arkansas, Cramer worked as a piano player on the Louisiana Hayride radio show. There he met Elvis Presley and joined his band, playing on the timeless recording of Heartbreak Hotel, but he opted to stay in Nashville when Elvis asked him to move with him to Los Angeles. It is certain he would have been a member of the LA-based Wrecking Crew of session musicians, but instead he became an A-Team member.

Among other magnificent moments he was responsible for the quirky sound effects that appeared on Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean, hitting an iron doorstop with a hammer. In the 1980s he and many A-Team stars like Chet Atkins and Charlie McCoy formed the Million Dollar Band, who often appeared on the TV variety show Hee Haw. Cramer died on the very last day of 1997 and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Songwriter: Shel Silverstein

At the 1970 Grammy Awards, Shel Silverstein won Best Country Song for writing a country standard about a poor boy who was given a girl’s name. Oh how we laughed at poor Sue who wanted to call his own son ‘Bill or George, any damn thing but Sue!!!’ Johnny Cash had a number one Hot 100 smash with it, selling it with gusto and performing it for the convicts of San Quentin.

Silverstein was a poet, musician, cartoonist (for Playboy magazine!!), children’s book writer and playwright from Chicago. Despite never living in Nashville (or perhaps for that very reason), he fell into writing songs for various outlaws including Tompall Glaser, Bobby Bare and, in her own way, Loretta Lynn. He gave Sylvia’s Mother and The Cover of Rolling Stone to Dr Hook, while his folk songs In The Hills of Shiloh and The Unicorn became standards.

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